03/26/2005 | C6ASB I was fortunate to be able to operate from the DX side on this one again, returning to C6A once again. This year, due to the Sand Dollar Villa rental QTH on Abaco not being available, Sandy and I chose a new location, on the island of Eleuthera. The QTH was much more remote, but right on a 25ft bluff overlooking a very private beach very nice for both R&R as well as antennas!

After my experience operating the contest on the beach at Abaco last year, I looked forward to doing this again. This year I was again a very casual entry, with my operating frequently interrupted by fishing, walks on the beach, and exploring. However, I operated for about 8 hours, making 435 QSOs at 5w output for a score of a little more than 130K. When I first came on the air, Saturday afternoon on 20m, the pileup was incredibleafter a few Qs, the pileup became just a steady carrier for several seconds, and I had to wait for things to quiet down some before I could even get just a few letters of a call!

My antennas this year were a linear-loaded vertical doublet for the beach, supported by a 20ft telescoping fishing pole. At the cottage I was using a ground plane antenna consisting of a 38ft linear-loaded vertical wire with two 30ft stub-tuned-radial counterpoise wires, elevated gull-wing style. Both antennas were fed with 300-ohm lightweight twinlead through automatic antenna tuners, making for instant band changes.

The biggest disappointment was hearing all the S9+ Europeans on 40m, 80m and 160m during the contest, and knowing they were off-limits. The highlight was the aforementioned pileup!

By the way, outside of the contest I operated primarily at 10w output even though I had a 100w rig with me. This was to assess whether bringing a 100w rig was worth the added weight and equipment required over QRP. I found that I could work most everything I heard even at 10w, as well as generate some reasonable pileups, and for those stations I couldnt work at 10w, I found that generally I couldnt work them with 100w either. No doubt the saltwater location and vertical antennas helped.

Hopefully Ill get to do this from the DX side, and perhaps more seriously, again some day!

See http://pages.cfu.net/~sjs/c6asb.htm for more information.
QSL via AK0M.

73, Steve Sutterer AK0M, C6ASB -- AK0M